Flight of the Missionaries

The roving armies known interchangeably as Communists or bandits were sweeping all before them last week in Northern Hunan Province in the heart of China. In safe Nanking the Government squeaked a warning to the U. S. Legation to get U. S. citizens out of Hunan. Already a pair of indomitable U. S. spinsters had decided on their way out.

Hearing the approaching alarums of a Communist-bandit horde coming fast down the Yuan River, the Misses Granner and Renninger hopped into a small Chinese junk and told the boatman to make haste by sail and oar for the city of Changteh. As the square-bowed, flat-bottomed boat slithered downstream, the army's hubbub crept up behind. The junk was lolloping along 20 miles short of Changteh when it was overhauled and seized by the bandits.

The two spinsters, however, crawled into.the junk's hold where they crouched under canvas. Remembering the fate of Missionaries Mr. & Mrs. John C. Stam whom Communists beheaded with a broad sword last month (TIME, Dec. 24), the ladies knew that discovery meant death. A word from the Chinese boatman would do it. The Misses Granner and Renninger crouched below decks for six days, listening, dozing, stretching, thinking about the unclassifiable noises that came from the sacking of the nearby town of Taoyuan. Twice hooves and boots clattered over-head in numbers, for the army had commandeered the junk as part of a pontoon bridge across the Yuan. On the sixth day the Communist-bandits left and last week the two indomitable spinsters sailed on into Changteh, praising their secretive boatman.

Even Changteh was not safe enough to offer U. S. missionaries more than a place to catch their breath last week. Fleeing on by junk. 36 pious folk suddenly became aware that acute pangs of childbirth were troubling Mrs. J. E. Graham of Carbondale, Pa. and Mrs. W. N. Wagner of Waterford. Mich. Jounced by the waters beyond endurance, they presented such a spectacle of woe that even with bandits hot on the junks trail there was nothing to do but pull ashore. In a rude Chinese peasant hut Missionary Doctor George Totell of Chicago performed the hasty, almost simultaneous deliveries--from Mrs. Graham a daughter, then from Mrs. Wagner a son. Piling back aboard the junks, the 36 who had become 38, tore on to safety, arrived splashed and wind-bitten at Changsha where Dr. Totell announced that both mothers and their infants were in the pink of health.

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